paper crafts – Dear Liza

Starting Early on Christmas!

October 29, 2025

Dear Liza,

I love it when two of my favorite people (who don’t even know each other) work together to give me good ideas. Let me explain.

Last week, my ZOOM art teacher Ruthie Inman taught us to make these tiny books.

You cut six strips of white paper 1” wide, then fold and cut 1” sections. Each section will become one book. Make the fold really sharp, then staple at the crease to hold the tiny pages together. Make sure the ‘feet’ of the staple are outside the book, so they will be hidden by the cover.

For the cover, choose slightly heavier decorative paper , and cut it just a bit longer than the book. Apply glue stick and use a bone folder to press it down.

Then fold the extra long edges over the first page to make a ‘dust cover’ edge. Really give this a good fold and press. And voilá, there is your tiny book, about one inch by one inch.

They are easy enough to make, I did 10 in a little more than an hour.

Then came the next favorite person. I was visiting with Auntie Katie and told her about the tiny books. “Could you string them…. Maybe on tiny twinkle lights… to hang on a Christmas tree?” She asked. Katie owns Books with Pictures here in Portland, and can always use pretty decorations.

Of course you could! The awl from my book-making kit (a gift from Ruthie), and a string of tiny lights ( from my SOAK jellyfish costume), and there we have it!

They look best in low light, of course, but very sweet even in normal light, giving the impression of flying, glowing books !

Could these be the newest Christmas tree sensation? Stranger things have happened!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Garden Journal Challenges

Dear Liza,

I like keeping garden journals. They let me keep track of what happens in the garden and when it happens, so I can learn from each year and get better year by year.

But I also like to make them creative, so I’ve used a different format every year. This year I am re-using a movie list book. It has nice roomy format which I really like.

However, re-using a book means I need to do something in each page to cover, obscure, or otherwise change the illustration that is there, unless I find a page with movies about plants.

This page came close. It was a watercolor from the movie “Amelie”, where the garden gnome goes on some adventures. I wanted to keep the gnome.

I cut some junkmail paper to cover the non-gnome parts, gave it a blurry garden-y paint job, and glued it down. The inside of a security envelope got some darker paint, and I had the basis for a decent page. I gave the gnome himself a little more yellow, since his blue didn’t go with my yellow-ish green.

I found a few nice greens in a handout from our Portland Art Museum, and cut leaves and stems. Not bad, but flat and boring. Auntie Bridgett brought some darker greens from her collage box. Better.

And finally, I cut flowers from some pink and blue paper from the same museum handout. Now the gnome looks right at home in his garden, and in my garden journal.

Creating and solving these artistic challenges everyday makes my brain so happy!

Love,

Grandma Judy

A New Kind of Journal Cover Part 1

Dear Liza,

My friend Ruthie Inman is always teaching me new things! This week, we are making a new journal cover.

For our Zoom Art group this week, she asked us to pull together some muslin fabric, tissue papers or napkins, and some watered down glue.

So friends in Scotland, Illinois and Portland did just that. And the project, at least this part, was just as easy as it could be. We slathered the thin glue mixture onto the fabric, tore the tissue paper into pieces, and stuck them down.

I started with bright colors from napkins, and then softened them with the white layers.

We kept gluing until we had about four layers, pausing to let it dry a bit in between layers so the whole gooey thing didn’t disintegrate under our brush.

I finished my piece with some old wrapping tissue flowers and a butterfly from a napkin, and left it to dry.

And to make sure it didn’t stick to the mat and dried completely by tomorrow, I carefully peeled the fabric and paper layers off the mat and laid them on a cooling rack.

We’ll see what happens when we all Zoom Art together on Thursday!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Figuring Things Out, Again

Dear Liza,

Once I got the hang of making these three-dimensional paper sculptures, I couldn’t stop! The Zoom Art Group I do with Ruthie Inman was still working on theirs, so I started a second one.

This time, I wanted to play with interlocking shapes. I chose the yin/yang symbol. It was tricky to get the shapes right, but with some tracing and flipping, it all worked out.

The supplies aren’t sophisticated… just cardboard from cracker and cereal boxes, paper headed for the recycling bin, and Elmer’s glue.

I kept making shapes! A big circle became two halves, and then a bunch of medium and smaller circles got assembled and dried. Tiny blocks kept them together while they dried.

Covering the curvy shapes is tricky, but clipping the curves and going slowly makes it more successful.

I used Mod Podge as the adhesive for this part because it is less slippery than Elmer’s. I tried a bit of flour paste, but it takes too long to dry and I am impatient.

Here are my shapes. Next step: Color and assembly!!

Love,

Grandma Judy

The Art of Figuring Things Out Part 2

Dear Liza,

Once all the heart ‘insides’ had dried and gotten solid, it was time to cover them. Ruthie suggested card stock, but I was worried that it would be too stiff to go around the curves.

I tried regular paper. I cut a strip an inch wider than the heart, and drew a line a half inch in from each edge, so I could clip the paper, like you do fabric, to make flanges on the curves. I spread some Mod Podge around the edges of the heart and went to work.

It was a bit fiddly to hold the paper to the glue for just long enough to adhere but not so long as to stick to ME, but it all worked out.

And where the strip of paper came up a bit short, it was easy to patch.

I got so carried away that I did three of them in a row!

I will show you the last steps once I have done them. I’m figuring this out as I go along.

That’s the whole point!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Creating Postcards

Dear Liza,

Since so many of my friends and family are far away and travel is difficult, I have started making cards and postcards to send to folks. There are many things I like about this type of art.

First, it is super cheap. The materials (old postcards, stationary, and magazines) can be found in free libraries and garage sales for next to nothing. The biggest expense in Mod Podge, and one $5 jar lasts a really long time. I also sometimes use acrylic paints as a background.

Next, it doesn’t require great artistic skill. You just paint, snip, place and layer until you like the way the card looks, then glue it down.

Third, each piece is small! You don’t spend a lot of time filling big spaces, and you can do several in a busy afternoon.

Fourth, it is easy to share your art with friends! After pressing it flat under books and protecting it with a spray of Kamar varnish (another expense, but one can lasts practically forever), just put a postcard stamp and a cheery note on your masterpiece and send it off.

Since the back of the postcard won’t match whatever you put on the front, you can glue plain paper to the back. I re-use the insides of envelopes, seen here being glued onto the back of the postcard. It gets trimmed to fit afterward.

And the best thing about this portable, inexpensive art form is that it can be made especially for the friend it is going to. Sweet flowers for Mae, a giraffe for Ruthie, or a beautiful butterfly mutant for Richard. It’s all for you to decide.

Have fun and send me a card!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Paper Mosaic Reprise

Dear Liza,

I have been bitten by the mosaic bug again, and I looked online for some inspiration. I found this is 1,600 years old mosaic, and I chose it because I love the eyes.

I know mosaics are labor intensive and wanted to start small, so I focused on just “the windows of the soul”, using a piece of backing paper about 5 x 8.

I sketched the basic shape in yellow pencil on dark paper about 5 by 8 inches. The dark background would mimic the grout usually used between tiles.

Since I loved the irregularity of the skin tones, I decided to paint a bunch to play with. Painting these swatches on heavy watercolor paper makes for bits that are easy to handle.

Then came the slow part, trimming and fitting and gluing. They should be small enough, but not too small, close enough, but not too close. It is intense work and I can only do it for about half an hour at a time.

There is a lot of second-guessing and talking to the bits as I work, lots of squinty work.

I was hoping to get this piece done today, because summer weather is predicted to start this weekend and I will (with any luck) be busy with planting and such.
But I didn’t. Here’s what have for now.

Love,

Grandma Judy

A Paper Mosaic

Dear Liza,

You know I love mosaics. I am fascinated by how the tiny bits fit and flow together to create larger images. I have taken hundreds of pictures of mosaics over the years.

I have even made some! The side table we use everyday is made from upcycled plates, a big broken bowl, and floor tiles from a building that was torn down, years ago, in Salinas.

But mosaics made from tile or plates are very heavy, and tend to be large. Good for a garden, maybe. But that’s an idea for later.

But mosaics made of paper could be smaller and lighter. And since one of the things I like best about mosaics is using ’damaged goods’ to another purpose, why not recycle some of my less-than-successful pictures into one?

I also had scraps from trimming a large piece down for cards…

Maybe they could work together? Because of the hot orange, I started with a starburst idea.

Could it look even better with the blue and black? I tried. Oh, yeah.

Continuing with the blue and into the green, I like it better and better.

And though I can see ways I could have done it better, I like this a lot. I think I will be playing with this some more.

Love,

Grandma Judy

New Year’s Eve

Dear Liza,

We had a fun New Year’s Eve at home this year. It was wonderful.

During the day, Auntie Bridgett worked for a few hours at the SideStreet Arts Gallery, and I wrote a little and practiced French. Grandpa Nelson started researching what looks like our next European trip: Ireland and France!

This is one of the things I love about our trips, is the planning and discussing, the research and the antici…..pation.

But the most fun was the hats!

Auntie Bridgett had a really good idea, to make funny New Year’s Eve hats out of the bags of used Christmas paper that were waiting to be thrown out. We started snipping and trying ideas, making it up as we went along.

While the glue was drying, Auntie Bridgett and I went out for some bowls from Laughing Planet to take home. We opened some Columbia Crest Merlot, which went very well with the spicy food.

The hats were so much fun! Auntie Bridgett’s stayed on her head better… mine needed a little rubber band strap. I think mine looked better on the bear, anyway.

We played a game of Brain Spin, which plays with how we see things, and our favorite, Scrabble, which I won!! This is a rare thing and I enjoyed it very much.

We nibbled and sipped and watched some Baking Show, then counted down to midnight, feeling sleepy but happy.
See you next year!

Love,

Grandma Judy